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Grey
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The machine beeps slowly, the sighing of a ventilator sometimes matching it and sometimes not. Around the room are dozens, no, hundreds of drawings and paintings, some filled in with color, and some simply black-on-white. There are familiar faces and there are strangers; there are flowers and rooms of light; there are fields filled with rain and snow. And she is in the center, blankets covering an ever-thinning body, her eyes worn and glazing.
A cough tears through the relative silence, the sound of lungs ripping and drowning underneath their own overtaxed cells. Her eyes flutter open briefly, now dull and uninterested, before squeezing closed again. Her fingers grip her blanket, their knuckles white and thin.
Cullen turns away as a man walks toward him, followed by a women. They are both in scrubs, hands tucked protectively over a clipboard, their gaits tired after long shifts. He talks with them, his wife behind him and watching in mournful silence. Long minutes pass.
Then they walk into the room where she is laying with a limp head and hands, the tube in her mouth rattling with her breathing. Words are spoken and her eyes flutter up briefly, unseeing, before flicking closed one last time. Then suddenly the ventilator stops sighing, and the beeping machine is in a frenzy before abruptly muting. More words are spoken and its over.
Then a sob, high and keening, pierces the air, its source shuddering and shrieking. Beside her, he stands silent, his heart gripped with a cold chill. It's like that for a long time, until the paintings are slowly removed, and the bed is stripped bare, and the only thing left is a dull grey, a grey with no depth or feeling. The color is gone, as are the roses and tulips, the green pastures and autumn forests, and now it's just grey. Grey like the walls, like her eyes, and his heart.
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